Where and how to buy good avocados

I’ve been buying avocados the last couple weeks. This is embarrassing because I have more than a dozen avocado trees growing in my yard.

We have no fruit off our own trees at the moment, however, due to a combination of some trees having an “off” year, plus the damaging heat this summer, plus the reality of late September through October always being a period of paucity in the avocado year of Southern California.

But I’ve been finding some good avocados to buy, drawing on strategies that I used years ago when I had no trees of my own, and here is how.

Buy avocados from California

The first thing I look for is where the avocado was grown, and if it’s not from California I almost never buy it. Here in 2018 we get imports from Mexico, Chile, and Peru. None of these imports ever taste as good as California avocados. None, ever. There are myriad reasons, including transportation distance, time in cold storage, excessive and poor handling, and growing climate. It’s not that good avocados are not grown in these other countries, but that in the U.S. we rarely get good avocados from these places.

Look for stickers on the fruit that say USA or California.

Just because an avocado was grown in California does not necessarily mean it will be high quality and great tasting. But all other circumstances being equal (see below), California-grown avocados have a far higher likelihood of being superior. Over the years, I’ve found many good California avocados to buy but very few good imports.

Buy avocados that are green and hard

Secondly, I look for fruit that is unripe. It should be green and hard. You know what people do to avocados on the store shelf. I’m sure you don’t do it, but you’ve seen people do it. Mr. and Mrs. Squeezy Fingers: “Hmmm, is this one ripe? Squeeze, squeeze. Is this one ripe? Squeeze, squeeze.”

Every poke of their finger tips causes bruising and rotting. Only you can’t tell because the skin of Hass avocado fruit usually turns black as it ripens, the same color as the bruising they’re causing.

But Mr. and Mrs. Squeezy Fingers don’t usually assault green and hard fruit. They go after black fruit, which is also easier to damage since it’s softening. So I buy only the greenest, hardest, most unripe fruit I can find.

Buy avocados that are bagged

Even more reliable than individual green and hard avocado fruit is buying green and hard avocados that are sold in bags. Around me, the stores that most commonly do this are Trader Joe’s and Costco. These bagged avocados are even less likely to have been beaten up by Mr. and Mrs. Squeezy Fingers. Rarely have I bought a bag of four little green California Hass from Trader Joe’s and cut them open to find bruising and rotting inside; they’re almost always of high quality, much more often than any other store-bought avocados.

I bought these a couple weeks ago and indeed, they were great eating.

Even if you can’t find California Hass avocados in a bag, buying bagged avocados grown in a far off country is usually a safe bet in terms of avoiding the bruising and rotting caused by fellow shoppers. For example, I just visited my brother and sister-in-law in Reno, Nevada who bought bagged Hass avocados at Costco that were grown in Peru. The avocados were nowhere near the prime flavor of California fruit, but they were all without interior rot. That’s worth a lot.

Buy other varieties when Hass is out of season

I also just visited some friends in Corvallis, Oregon who buy their avocados at First Alternative, a food co-op. On September 12, this store still had California Hass available. I bought this one:

This is misleading. The truth in it comes from the fact that almost all California avocados grown for commercial purposes are of the Hass variety, and the Hass season is winding down. But in September there is still excellent Hass fruit coming off trees in the northern areas of the southern part of California.

More importantly, there are varieties other than Hass that have a later season, and if you can find them, consider yourself lucky. My wife found some Lamb avocados at a Sprouts store the other day. You may have unknowingly seen these too: they’re usually labelled “Jumbo Hass.” (That’s a nonsense marketing name. They’re not Hass although they do look very similar to Hass.) Lamb is a California variety that tastes great from the middle of summer into fall.

You can tell they are Lamb avocados and not Hass because they’re a bit bigger and square at the stem end. They also have slight ridges on their “shoulders.”

There is also the Reed avocado, which has almost the same season as Lamb: summer into fall. I’ve bought many Reed avocados at Whole Foods Markets in years past.

A Reed beside a Hass from my trees.

I asked my friends in Corvallis if they ever got avocados other than Hass at the co-op, and they remembered getting Bacon. Besides Lamb, Reed, and Bacon, I’ve seen some Fuerte avocados sold in select stores, for example at Bristol Farms. But I’ve never seen them in typical supermarket chain stores.

Hass avocado beside Fuerte avocado.

The seasons to find Bacon and Fuerte avocados are from about November through the end of winter.

Buy avocados at farmers markets

There can be good avocados at farmers markets. The appeal of buying avocados at a farmers market is that you can buy varieties other than Hass and that are in season, such as the ones mentioned above. But there are even more varieties to be found at farmers markets. I’ve bought Pinkerton, Edranol, Nabal, MacArthur, Corona, and other uncommon varieties at farmers markets throughout California over the years.

The short of it

In summary, if possible, buy California-grown, green and hard, maybe bagged avocados. Find good Hass avocados at some chain grocery stores like Trader Joe’s, but other varieties are most likely found only at smaller, specialty food stores or farmers markets outside the season for California Hass (which is approximately March through August).

As a final note, a few California avocado growers have started selling their fruit directly through their own website or on Amazon. I’ve yet to try avocados from any of them. But if I lived outside the western states of the U.S., with no other access to California fruit, I’d order some. It seems highly likely that the fruit will be good since it’s grown relatively close in California, shipped straight to you without being touched by Mr. and Mrs. Squeezy Fingers, and the farmers sometimes offer different varieties in the peak of their season.

(Find these growers by doing a web search of “buy California avocados.”)

Also, I’ve mailed avocados from my trees to family who live out of state and the fruit has arrived in top shape so I know the method is feasible.

You pay a lot for such second best fruit, but if the best avocados in the world — those off your own trees — aren’t available, then you do what you have to.

6 Comments

Susie DiGiovanna
on September 14, 2018 at 2:12 pm

Hi Greg,
Thank you so much for your wonderful site and information!
I live in North Tustin and would like to plant an orange tree and possibly a tangerine tree as well.
Could you please tell me the best time of year to plant them? Also what is the best variety (sweetness, ease of growing, seedless) for a newbie like me?
Thank you so much!!!

In North Tustin you can plant a citrus any time of year although it can be most satisfying to plant one in late spring since the tree will quickly start putting out new growth after planting. I often plant in fall, about now in fact, because it’s easy to keep up the frequent watering necessary for the first few weeks and then let the winter rains take care of it until spring.

For my yard, I’ve chosen a Valencia orange and a Cara Cara navel orange. But it’s still hard to beat the classic Washington navel orange in terms of sweetness, being seedless, and easy peeling.

There are so many good tangerine varieties to choose from these days. I’m happy with all of mine: Kishu, Gold Nugget, Pixie, Satsuma, Dancy. But I like the first three the most because Satsumas are a little bland in my opinion and the Dancy has seeds.

The last thing I’ll add is that if you only plant one orange and one tangerine, I’d choose varieties that have different harvest seasons. I’d probably choose Kishu and Cara Cara/Washington, for example, because then you can eat Kishus in the late fall through winter and eat oranges from the late winter through spring. Something like that.

I pick the avocados right before I mail them so that they’re as hard and tough as possible during the shipping.

I mail Monday, Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, but no later in the week. This way the box of avocados arrives by Saturday and is not sitting around somewhere en route on a Sunday.

I use a Medium Flat Rate box through the U.S. Postal Service.

I fill the space around the avocados in the box with popcorn. I just pop the popcorn, let it cool, and pour it in. Popcorn works great as cushion and insulation, and it’s nice that it can eventually be an animal’s snack or compost.

For many years before I had property on which to grow my own avocados, I would get frustrated by California growers’ refusal to grow anything but Hass. It meant half the year eating junk avocados from other countries. I’ve thought it would be good to try to provide people with good avocados outside the six-month California Hass season.

Also, I always wished I could taste fruit of the varieties I was thinking of planting — before buying and planting a tree of that variety. Sometimes that’s near impossible. (Where are you going to buy a Fuerte avocado anymore let alone a Jan Boyce?) So I’ve thought it might be good to offer fruit of varieties other than Hass so people can taste them before choosing which kind to plant.